This is a personal blog updated regularly by Dr. Daniel Reed, Vice President for Research and Economic Development at the University of Iowa.
These musing on the current and future state of technology, scientific research and innovation are my own and don’t necessarily represent the University of Iowa's positions, strategies or opinions.

March 2010

March 29, 2010

It is March Madness time, with the Final Four in sight. Fear not. Despite the ominous connotations, the United States is not in the throes of an epidemic of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) or another prion-based dementia, nor do we tremble in the apocalyptic shadow of Four Horsemen. Rather, we are collectively enthralled by the unscripted athletic performance art that defines the NCAA basketball tournaments.

They're On Fire!

As I have watched bits of the basketball games and felt the faint spark of yearning for my long faded and oh so limited athletic prowess, I cannot help but think about what athletes of all levels in diverse sports call The Zone. It's that all too ephemeral interval when time seems to slow down, when the basket looks as big as a lake each time the ball touches your hands, when the baseball drifts slowly up to the plate like a candy-filled piñata, when a magnet seems to draw the golf ball toward the cup.

Yes, it's an endorphin high, but it is also a psychological state. Truth be told, this is why we practice and why we play the games. Yes, we are competitive and we want to win, but our deeper motivation is the love of the game – and if we are really lucky – the hope of entering The Zone.

An entire sports vernacular has evolved to describe this experience: "Putting on a clinic." "He/she is on fire." "He/she is scoring at will." "They're playing a different game." Every sport has phrases that capture some element of our vicarious joy, and the most iconic performances assume near mythic status in our collective sports memories.

Discovery Magic

In scientific circles, we speak in more antiseptic and officious terms. The rhetoric concerns the joy of discovery, a passion for research, or a boundless curiosity. It is more personal, though, than we often are willing to admit. Doing so would suggest unseemly emotion in domains where we pretend to be dispassionate Diogenesians, seeking only truth. Our intellectual subterfuge belies reality – The Zone has an analog in research.

Over the past thirty years, I have asked scientists of varying distinction and age and across cultures and disciplines to explain the rationale for their intellectual passions. After some prodding and embarrassment, most tell a variant of the same story. It's the shared tale of The Magic. I suspect you know it too.

The Magic is an experience that comes unbidden and without warning, touching each in different ways. It is the wide eyed wonder in a child when insight burns bright, inspiring a lifetime yearning for another discovery fix. It is the theorist who creates a proof to illuminate connections among the heretofore unrelated. It is the experimentalist astonished at seeing for the first time what nature has hidden in plain view. It is the computer scientist who incarnates logic as software, with results that surprise and amaze.

The Magic first touched me when I was eight, as I spent hours in the garage conducting simple optics and electricity and magnetism experiments. As a college and graduate student, and later as a young professor, The Magic would come back to me in the quiet of the night. It was when jumbled facts suddenly fused and I knew – truly knew – something for the first time. The lemmas and theorems glistened with beauty; the code took life and danced; and the words flowed like water.

For me, it was a Zen state, achievable only after long hours of focused thought. I hoped it would last forever, but I knew it would fade, as it always did. At best, I could hold it for a few hours, sleepless and enthralled.

The Magic, scientists yearn for it with the lingering hunger of memory and thee dreams of future insights.

The Human Condition

Perhaps in another brane where the quantum foam bubbles in different ways, an announcer is exclaiming, "She's on fire! That's the fifth longstanding conjecture proved this year!" Or in another, we hear the color commentator say, "He's putting on a clinic! Look at the elegance of that API specification. That's a Hall of Fame move!"

Though we can dream, scientists are unlikely to experience the adrenalin rush that comes when thousands of screaming fans chant their name. Yet The Zone and The Magic, though different, are fundamentally the same. Both are essential elements of the human condition. Each is the progeny of long hours of human endeavor, with the power to inspire and amaze.

As March Madness unfolds, watch the players in The Zone, think of The Magic, and share your own story.

March 03, 2010

I have been reflecting on the nature of technical presentations. The motivations are manifold, the potential audiences are diverse, the expected outcomes varied, and there are so many ways to sink into the quicksand of somnambulant soliloquy.

Addressing the Sleepy

Let's begin with one of the most fearsome challenges – the after dinner speech. There are more difficult audiences, such as a group of restive five year olds coming down from a sugar-induced high, but not many. As dessert and coffee are served, you may well find yourself wondering what moment of foolish weakness allowed you to accept such a speaking invitation. All is not lost if one remembers key rules.

An after dinner audience is neither the time nor the place to attempt feats of technical legerdemain or cite obscure technical references. Rather, anecdotes, levity and (especially) brevity are to be prized above all else. Remember, though, that wit and humor lie in the eye of the beholder. With an after dinner audience, a rambling discourse on the funarg problem, call by name and call by value cannot be ameliorated by a retelling of Nicklaus Wirth's self-deprecating anecdote that Europeans call him by name and Americans by value!

Unlike humor, however, you, as the speaker, are in full control of brevity. If you find yourself struggling to be inspiring or entertaining, be succinct. The clearest sign and most humbling omen that you have failed, beyond the obvious signs of boredom, is when the phrase "in conclusion" silences the scrape of dessert cutlery and inspires expectant and excited looks. Sadly, I have experienced that emotion, both as audience member and as speaker.

Addressing the Curious

At the other extreme lies the technical presentation, the one most familiar to researchers as an oral exegesis of a technical paper. It has its own pitfalls, for both experienced and novice presenters.

For the newcomer, I heartily recommend the late Peter Medawar's delightful book, Advice to a Young Scientist. Although some of his presentation advice is technologically dated, the humor and academic perspective are timeless. I simply note that a modern updating of Medawar's advice would be to use a laser pointer sparingly, particularly if one is nervous, because the existence of trembling hands is wonderfully magnified.

Even in steady hands, an invited presentation should not be a complete regurgitation of a paper's content. Rather, it should eschew details in favor of describing the problem, solution approach, outcomes and implications. Do not read your slides; talk to your audience. Your objective is to make the audience want to read your paper.

Remember that few things strike more fear into the heart of even a technical audience than such phrases as "Combining lemmas 5, 12, and 19, it is obvious that …" If one has to explain why something is obvious, it probably is not. Like house guests who leave while their company is still being enjoyed, one wants to leave the audience excited and curious to know more – not less.

Addressing the Future

Finally, there is the plenary conference presentation or the vision and policy overview. It should inspire and motivate, drawing on research experience and open problems. It is usually neither as detailed as a technical presentation nor as lighthearted as an after dinner speech.

When discussing high-performance computing policy and research challenges, I have often found myself among a cadre of friends who were offering their perspectives on the same issues. In that spirit, my friends, Jack Dongarra (Tennessee/ORNL) and Rick Stevens (Chicago/ANL), have reflected on how frequently memes transit presentation boundaries.

One of us will hear the other describe an interesting idea or effective summary of an idea, morph the idea or slide, incorporate it into our talk, and present it with the others in the audience at another venue. It often passes among us several times, massaged and adapted each time, until none of know its origin, but all are invested in it. More generally, that is how new research ideas evolve and grow.

Public speaking can be great fun. When done well, it is a form of performance art. Enjoy it, and help your listeners enjoy it also!